Parking space availability is a major problem in crowded areas, particularly urban areas. The importance of better parking systems in urban areas has been recognized recently as one of the most important avenues for betterment of urban infrastructure. One study estimated a loss of $78 billion in one year in the form of 4.2 billion lost hours and 2.9 billion gallons of wasted gasoline in the United States alone. Several projects recently have sought to address this issue through the design of mobile systems that collect traffic congestion information to improve route finding and trip planning. Unfortunately, a significant portion of traffic congestion and travel delays are experienced in downtown areas where it is not always possible to reroute a driver. In these densely populated urban areas, congestion and travel delays also are due to parking. In one study, researchers found in one small business district of Los Angeles that, over the course of a year, vehicles looking for parking created the equivalent of 38 trips around the world, burning 47,000 gallons of gasoline and producing 730 tons of carbon dioxide. Clearly, addressing the problems associated with parking in downtown areas would have significant societal impact, both economically and ecologically.
Prior attempts to solve this problem often have focused on monitoring the presence or absence of a vehicle over each parking spot using a dedicated sensor. These attempts typically rely on fixed sensors installed by municipalities in the ground or on parking meters. This results in a large fixed cost for installation and operation in order to cover parking spaces at a city-wide level (e.g., millions of dollars to cover a small percentage of the total number of parking spots).
As a result, there remains a need to better address problems associated with parking space availability.